


Rosewater

by PhoenixAccio



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Feelings Jams, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Misunderstandings, No Sex, Pale Porn (Homestuck), Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Panic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 13:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18411155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixAccio/pseuds/PhoenixAccio
Summary: Dave and Karkat's movie night doesn't go quite as expected. Not necessarily in a bad way.





	Rosewater

**Author's Note:**

> i wasnt specifically trying to make dave and karkat autistic in this but thats definitely what happened

They were about halfway through the movie--Karkat's millionth rewatch of Titanic, and Dave's sixth, unfortunately--when Karkat sort of just... flopped over, straight onto Dave's lap.

"Oh, shit! Karkat?" Dave squawked in alarm. Sometimes, when he still lived with Bro, Dave would just pass out like this, after he'd been awake for long enough. He'd tried not to, at least not outside his room. Bro wouldn't move him, but he'd sure as hell expect a willing strife or two when Dave woke up. Karkat never fell asleep during movies, though, so Dave couldn't push back the instinctive flash of panic it caused in time to keep his face flat. Before the fear could go too much further, however, Karkat rolled over, just a little, to look up at Dave.

"Yeah?" he said, voice soft at the edges in that way it only got when he and Dave were alone together, when Karkat's guard was down.

"Uh, nothing, nevermind," Dave muttered, "just, uh, you good, dude?"

Dave half expected Karkat to snap at him or something, but the troll just smiled lazily, and said "yeah, 'm fine."

Dave furrowed his eyebrows. Karkat was literally never this chill. Something was up.

"You sure? Because you're, like, never this chill."

"Can't a troll relax with his human 'bro' every once in a while?" Karkat said, and giggled. Fucking giggled. Something was definitely up, but Dave just sort of sighed and shrugged it off, turning back to the movie.

No matter what Karkat might claim to the contrary, Dave did usually try to pay attention to Karkat's movies. Karkat paid attention to his, so it was only fair to at least make an _attempt_ to watch Karkat's rom-coms, but now Dave couldn't help but be deeply aware of Karkat's head in his lap. Not necessarily in a bad way, he could just feel the weight of Karkat's head and the faint prickle of his thick, coarse hair through the material of Dave's pants, the slight press of Karkat's nubby left horn against Dave's leg where Karkat had turned his head to see the screen, working in tandem to make it impossible to pay any attention. Out of curiosity Dave moved his hand up to rest on Karkat's head. Karkat didn't react, so the hand stayed there, undisturbed.

Ever since he'd first met the trolls in person, Dave had been fascinated by... well, a lot of things, but especially their hair: the way it caught the light, the shine tinted just slightly in their blood colour, the way each strand stood on end when the trolls were mad or scared, fluffing up like a threatened cat. It was interesting. The hair beneath Dave's fingertips was down flat now though, and unexpectedly smooth, unlike human hair. Dave sort of knew troll hair worked differently than human, but he hadn't ever actually felt it like this. Dave rubbed an inky lock between his fingertips, fascinated. The pin-straight strands seemed thicker than Dave's own hair, and a touch stiffer, too. If he looked closely, Dave clould even see the hint of red through the black that the light revealed. The back of Dave's mind insisted that this couldn't be real hair. It was, of course, just not that of a human. Just then, Dave noticed a new noise that was definitely not coming from the movie, a low, rumbling click, but with another tone to it, like crickets. It only took Dave a moment to realize the source of the noise was Karkat.

"You okay, man?" Dave asked, attempting to stop the concern from tinting his voice. Like, he knew trolls were all weird bug dudes or whatever, but he hadn't actually heard any of them make the sound Karkat was currently producing, so it was fully within his rights to be a little worried, (not that he was.)

Karkat didn't reply, but when Dave tried to remove his hand from Karkat's head, the troll's hand shot up to catch Dave's, placing it firmly back on his head.

"It's fine," Karkat snapped, the grey skin of his cheeks tinting a darker, red-tinged grey. "I'm fine, don't stop."

Slightly taken aback by Karkat's insistence, Dave let out a gaspy little huff that was almost a laugh, and obligingly went back to petting Karkat's hair. If Karkat liked this, who was Dave to stop doing it just because he thought it was "too gay" or something. Karkat was his best bro, and the guy had been really stressed recently. To be honest, even for all his complaining about having to rewatch Titanic _again,_ Dave was mostly glad Karkat was getting a chance to unwind, before his mental state just snapped like a mountain-climber's rope, leaving Karkat falling down the side of Mount Everest and probably fuckin' freezing to death on the way down or something. Dave shook the long-winded metaphor from his head and focused on the movie. If they were watching this, he figured he may as well pay attention. Maybe later he could follow Karkat around yelling the dialogue at him. That would probably drive the dude nuts, Dave figured. Dave felt his fingers brush past one of Karkat's nubby little horns on their next stroke through Karkat's hair, and suddenly, the chirpy noise Karkat had been making the whole time Dave's hands had been on his head (Dave figured it was a good sound, judging by context (wait, was this, like, the troll version of purring?)) picked up dramatically, and Karkat pushed up against Dave's hand, which was, of course, already past where it had brushed the horn by now. Dave released a little puff of breath from his nose, equal parts amusement and surprise, and brought his hand back up to Karkat's horn, fascinated by this new discovery. If he could elicit that kind of response from barely grazing Karkat's horn, how would he react to having it touched properly?

Slowly, Dave brought his hand back up to hover above Karkat's horn. He hesitated for a second, then lowered it to rest on the smooth, slighly fuzzy at the bottom surface of Karkat's horn. As soon as Dave's fingers made contact with the horn, Karkat's purr spiked as it had before, and the troll let out a little gasp. Dave touched the velvety fuzz near the base of Karkat's horns, intrigued by the peach-fuzz like texture beneath his fingertips. He'd always just assumed troll horns were, like, bone, or something. This was totally different. The fuzz got shorter and more sparse the closer Dave's fingers got to Karkat's rounded horn-tips. They were almost totally smooth at the tips, like a river rock, edges smoothed by the flow of rushing water. Dave rubbed his thumb over the tip of the horn, and Karkat shifted to allow Dave access to the other side. His purring had more or less plateaued at this point, coming to rest just below the volume to which it had spiked when Dave had first touched Karkat's horns. As soon as Dave's hand came to rest on Karkat's untouched horn, however, the purr grew yet louder than it had been the entire time, and Karkat let out a sort of messy trill. Dave, encouraged by the clearly deeply positive reaction he was getting, began giving the new horn the same treatment the other was getting, stroking up and down the horn and playing with the soft, orangey velvet fuzz that covered the troll's nubby horns. Accidentally at first, Dave's pinkie finger pressed into the root of Karkat's horn, where the tough vermillion keratin met the scalp, and Karkat let out what was undeniably a moan. Dave jerked his fingers away at the noise, just as Karkat slapped both hands over his mouth.

Karkat scrambled clumsily to push himself off Dave's lap, as Dave sat frozen, watching him. Dave was panicking again, his heartrate picking up as _I fucked up_ played on loop in his head.

"I'm--" Karkat started, but his voice cut off as he choked on the purr that hadn't quite petered out yet. This only seemed to frustrate him more as he swallowed twice to try and get the involunatry vocalization down to a level he could talk through, then tried again. "I'm sorry! I shouldn't have done that, I'm taking advantage of you, fuck, I'm such a piece of shit!" Karkat spat, once he'd forced his throat into submission.

The sudden outburst shocked Dave out of his panic loop, and he blinked in surprise.

"What?" Dave asked bluntly.

"I'm taking advantage of you!" repeated Karkat. "I was stressed, and I let you touch my horns, and you aren't my moirail, you don't even know what any of this means. I need to get it through through my dense cranial casing that you don't have the capacity to pity me back the way I want you to instead of just ignoring it because something fucking feels good!"

Karkat was panting when he finished, and Dave noticed little droplets of pink gathering in the corners of Karkat's wide, golden eyes. He'd never been good with social shit, even on Earth with other members of his own species, but that didn't mean Dave didn't feel even worse for not understanding something Karkat was clearly so upset about.

"I'm gonna need you to explain a little bit more exactly how you were taking advantage of me," Dave told Karkat. He was aware that his voice had gone flat, how it always did when he was nervous, and he knew it was probably going to freak Karkat out even more, but he couldn't bring himself to force emotional cues back into his voice right now. Trying to figure out what social boundary Karkat thought he'd broken and how to respond to that was energy consuming enough without attempting the extra preformative shit at the same time.

"Touching somebody's horns is generally considered a pale activity," Karkat explained. His voice was still slightly shaky, but he was trying for Dave's sake. "So is touching their hair, but that's not quite as exclusively pale as horns."

"Pale is the bro quadrant, right?" Dave clarified.

"It's more than that, but yeah, that's the right one," Karkat explained, waiting for Dave's nod before continuing.

"It's calming, I guess? Really calming. Rubbing someone's horns and touching their cheeks are the most quintessentially pale gestures out of everything moirails do together. That's why we can't do this. You barely even know what a moirail even is, much less what the things you're doing mean."

"Then explain it," Dave countered immediately. "If I know what everything means I can decide whether or not I'm cool with it."

Karkat seemed stunned for a moment, as if he'd expected Dave to stop speaking to him forever and join Gamzee living in the vents. After a moment, he closed his eyes and started talking.

"A good moirallegiance," Karkat began, "is an equal partnership. Each side of the diamond is responsible for supporting the other half. It's about taking care of each other, and having someone to go to when you're sick or hurt who you know won't stab you in the back or slip you poison while you aren't looking. It's about having somebody to talk to."  
Karkat seemed to have calmed down a little as he'd spoken, distracted by the opportunity to talk about one of his favourite subjects to a willing listener. Dave was glad Karkat wasn't freaking out as much. For a moment Dave thought about what Karkat had said, then he spoke.

"That all sort of just sounds like stuff we do all the time," Dave started, "couldn't we just do our normal stuff plus the petting or whatever you want to call it?"

Karkat froze. 

"What is that supposed to mean, Strider?" he asked warily.

"Uh, I guess it means... Do you wanna be moirails?" Dave asked.

"What?"

"Moirails," Dave repeated. "We basically do all that shit already, and if being able to calm you down and make you feel nice is something that comes with that then, bonus, right?"

"Don't say that," Karkat replied, face falling from shock into something between anger, devastation, and betrayal as his voice shook.

"What, that we should be moirails?" Dave questioned.

"Don't say that shit! You don't know what it means, don't say shit like that if you don't mean it."

"I do know what it means," Dave insisted, "you just explained it, and I mean it too. We're basically already moirails as far as I can tell, why not make it official?"

Karkat's eyes were tearing up again, and his eyebrows knit in disbelief. Dave reached forward, slowly, so Karkat could stop him if he wanted, and placed his hand on Karkat's cheek like he'd seen trolls do in the rom-coms Karkat forced Dave to watch with him. Huh, maybe they were good for something after all. As soon as Dave's hand made contact with Karkat's cheek, the troll practically melted, pressing into Dave's palm and closing his eyes, knocking loose the rosewater tears in his waterlines and allowing them to slip down his cheeks. Dave wiped the closest tear with his thumb, which only made Karkat cry more.

"Seriously? Are you sure?" Karkat asked shakily, opening his eyes to look up at Dave's face.

"Seriously," Dave confirmed. "Want to be moirails?"

"Fuck yes," Karkat replied wetly, nuzzling into Dave's hand once more. Then, Karkat crawled back Dave's lap, pressing his face into Dave's shirt and getting tears everywhere. Dave wrapped his arms around Karkat (his moirail!) and began running his fingers through Karkat's strange hair once more. In the background, the movie played on. Neither Dave nor Karkat paid it any attention at all.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Xenobiology Notes: Pale Hormones Edition**  
>  karkat is really stressed, and when trolls get stressed their brain kicks the piling instincts into gear, and the troll goes and finds their moirail. technically karkat doesnt have a moirail, but he does have a huge pale crush on dave, and brains cant really tell the difference. the piling instincts especially kick in when your moirail(/pale crush) is right next to you radiating concern through his body language, facial expression, and pheromones all at once. your brain takes all this info to mean youre ready to pile and you get flooded with pale hormones, turning you completely docile, and very cuddly


End file.
